Tank No. 1
Filling Tina Modotti’s frame, the curved wall of an oil tank flattens into a graphic field. Modotti intended this photograph to illustrate a volume of proletarian poetry by Germán List Arzubide, a fellow activist in the leftmost circles of Mexico City’s art scene. Though the project was never published, the photograph’s composition, with its prominent typography, conjures an unrealized book cover. Less interested in industrial forms than in the people who operated them, Modotti attends to the symbolic ascent of a laborer across the tank’s vast surface.
Artwork Details
- Title: Tank No. 1
- Artist: Tina Modotti (Italian, 1896–1942)
- Date: 1927
- Medium: Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions: 24.3 x 19.3 cm (9 9/16 x 7 5/8 in.)
- Classification: Photographic Equipment
- Credit Line: Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987
- Object Number: 1987.1100.198
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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Tina Modotti
1926
Tina Modotti
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Tina Modotti
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